Domestic and International Accounts of Women in STEM
Ignite Program Interest in STEM Fields have been dwindling in recent years. Although, these fields have always been heavily male dominated, there has been many recent initiatives to get more women interested in these fields. In the journal Igniting women's passion for careers in stem Cheryl Platz writes about the Ignite program which inspires girls to pursue their education in STEM. The Ignite program started out as rarelitary small program only available for girls in the Seattle School District. The Ignite now serves over 20,000 women a year in several different countries such as Nigeria,Ghana and Egypt.These women are given the opportunity that fills their year with “workshops, field trips, job shadows, mentorships, additional presentations, and the support and encouragement of peers and educators”(Platz, 2012). These programs do not only give these women immense opportunity, but it helps these girls to make “personal connection with real female role models that inspires the girls to consider options they hadn't seen before(Platz, 2012). Microsoft Imagine Cup Imagine Cup is an annual competition sponsored and hosted by Microsoft Corp. Every year Microsoft Corp hosts this world premier student technology competition. This competition brings together students from 71 different countries to help solve some of the most pending problems facing our society today with technology. In 2013 an all girl group from Muscat, Oman entered the competition. The group came up with “an app called ReadX, which helps dyslexic children improving their learning and allows their parents to keep track of their progress. The app was good enough to win a national Imagine Cup, a Microsoft-sponsored student competition” (Lemmon, 2013). These women were not only one out of the three female groups in the competition, but they were also muslim. Everyone was surprised that a group of muslim women were participating in such a prestigious competition. In the article, “Do muslim women really need saving ?” by Lila Abu-Lughod, she talks about the usual narrative of muslim women and how women in Islam are viewed as needed to be saved by western women (Abu-Lughod, 2002). The ReadX group did not understand the narratives that have been written about women in islam until going to this competition. They said, “We really didn't think about it until we came and everyone was surprised," (Lemmon, 2013). She++ A female programming duo from Standford University has came up with a group to support female college students and young women in STEM, specifically in programming. The group, She++, built their name as a play on words, recognizing the computer programming language, C++. The group is sponsered by many huge industries in the technology world, including, Google, Cisco, Microsoft, Facebook, and Oracle, just to name a few. The overall goal of the group is to make Computer Science more appealing to women and to abolish the stereotype of Computer Science as a field for men only. The group holds conferences highlighting women in major technology industries. The group has also branched out to educate high school students in the California Bay Area in a sub-division called #include. On their website, they have also given oppurtunities to students outside the California area to apply to their #include program. Stemettes STEMettes was founded by Anne-Marie Imafidon. She has launched the program in the United Kingdom for women and girls there who are interested in STEM fields. Anne-Marie herself is seen as an inspirational women intechnology given her skills and achievements at such a young age. In addition to creating STEMettes, Anne-Marie has graduated from Cambridge University with a Master's degree in Computer Science. Her goal for STEMettes is to show to the world that women can be computer programmers as well. So far, herself and her team has reached many cities in the United Kingdom, and constantly reach out to women globally through the use of their YouTube videos and other social media.